Destiny
by arun2110
Summary: The Gods killed his wife and children, burnt his kingdom to the dust and locked him away for eternity for daring to merely disagree with them. In their arrogance, they forgot about him, but he has not and now, the time is anon for his return…


Destiny

Arun

Prologue

Notes: This is going to be rewrite of my very first fanfic, the ranma-sm crossover Destiny. This time, it'll definitely be shorter and hopefully, sweeter (I'm aiming for less than 200,000 words for the whole story, but God knows how many it'll actually take.) The original fanfic was influenced some by Fire's Destiny's Child and Jeffrey Vasquez's Progeny. I hope that the rewritten one will reach the lofty standards set by its spiritual ancestors. LOL. Now, on with the story.

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Genma Saotome's face was the very definition of stoic as he finished wrapping his son, Ranma in lines of fishcake. Even in his catatonic state, the boy stiffened unconsciously as the smell hit his nostrils. As he carried the boy to the cat pit, there was a cold stab of fear in Genma's heart that his son's sanity was already lost and that this latest session would cost the boy's life as well, but he squashed that line of thought. A part of him still hoped that persisting with the training would lead to Ranma mastering the dreaded nekoken and recovering from the inertia that had afflicted him for a week now.

Genma knew for a certainty that he could not approach the authorities to help his son before the training was complete and Ranma was back to his old self. The path of a martial artist was fraught with more danger than ever in these effeminate times in the guise of stifling red tape and idiotic white-collar worker. As a result, medical help that in the past would have been available to his son would now land his father in prison and see the boy in the permanent custody of the state. That wasn't going to happen. Ever. For one thing, his wife would kill Genma and for another, Ranma was his father's sole legacy.

There were very few souls who understood the old ways in these modern times, much less followed them. Genma was one among those few. And as dedicated as he was, he could not follow the rules of honor strictly himself. After all, there were no daimyos to support people with his level dedication to the art and neither his nor Nodoka's clan had the financial wherewithal to support his pursuits, the which demands kept him busy all day everyday. So, the elder Saotome stooped to petty thievery and con games to support himself and his son on the road. This was the primary reason why Ranma had to successfully complete the nekoken training. Genma wanted to prove to the world that he was more than a petty thief and that the art was much more than mere exercise for the body.

Of course, there was also the promise he'd made to his wife about raising Ranma as a man among men, but Genma considered that moot. To be sure, Nodoka's family sword was a fearsome weapon that jellied his belly, but there was no doubt in the Saotome patriarch's mind at all that his son would grow up to be a paragon among martial artists.

And that last was just another reason to complete the nekoken training. No son of his was going to grow up weak-minded pussy who couldn't overcome fear of cats. The way the boy had been ruled by his fear these fast few weeks was disgraceful. It wasn't as if the dreaded master had put Genma through worse himself and hadn't he grown stronger for those tribulations? _So would Ranma, by the kami! _the elder Saotome swore mentally.

With that last thought, Genma approached the cat pit and removed its cover. Immediately, the stink of felines cooped up in an enclosure for too long with little water and no water hit him and Ranma started to writhe in his arms and mewled his fear, his throat being too hoarse for the last two and a half weeks to manage anything else. Suppressing his fears for the boy, Genma forced him to ooze disgust as he shook the boy.

"Boy, are you a man or a weakling girl? You shame our ancestors with this stupid fear of yours. Now, man-up, get in there and learn the nekoken," the Saotome patriarch barked as he threw Ranma into the pit and covered it.

Half an hour later, the yowling of cats stopped abruptly. When Ranma did not emerge from the pit, Genma – his heart beating a million out of fear – pulled the cover and discovered the cats dead and his son disappeared into thin air. The Saotome patriarch searched everywhere for a month eschewing food and rest for the boy, but there was no sign to be found neither near nor afar. For all intents and purposes, the six year old boy had simply vanished off the face of the earth.

Thus, it was with a heavy and broken heart that Genma returned to his wife to tell her the awful news only to discover that things at home had much changed…

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Author's Notes:

I'll be updating this slowly, because there are five others on my plate with TBLP and my own novel demanding a whole lot of my attention, but Destiny is third in priority.

Anyways, hope you liked that short prologue. I'd like it very much if you'd share your thoughts on the story so far.


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